Best Damn Banana Bread

Okay, so first things first, this is not something to bake while you’re on a diet, which I am. This is a banana bread recipe I haven’t made for a few years that my brother adores, but I must admit, having tried it again in my old age, I would pretty much halve the chocolate and sugar content because it’s crazy rich and sweet. As such, there are two sets of measurements for a few of the ingredients, depending on whether you have an extremely sweet tooth or just a normal person sweet tooth. This also contains macadamia nuts, but you could easily leave those out or substitute something else if you’re allergic to nuts.

Ingredients

250g plain flour

2tsp baking powder

3 bananas

125g unsalted butter (room temperature)

2 eggs

125g light brown sugar (or 75g for normal folks)

125g dark brown sugar (75g ditto)

100g good quality dark chocolate

100g good quality milk chocolate

1 tsp vanilla essence

pinch of cinnamon

100g macadamia nuts

Method

Find large loaf tin of around 900g capacity, and grease the hell out of it with some extra butter. I mean, you can use any tin you want to be honest, but bigger is better. My tin was too small I and had leftover mixture that I ended up chucking in a ramekin to make a mini one. Better to have too big a tin than too small. If you have baking paper, by all means, use that as well, but with a good greasing you should be fine.

In your largest mixing bowl, sift the flour and baking powder together.

In another mixing bowl (or just a big soup bowl if you’re desperate) mash your bananas.

Whisk your two eggs a little, then add them and the butter to your banana mush.

Mix it up a little (not too much) then add your sugar. Mix that all together carefully, by which point it should be looking pretty gross. That’s a good thing as you don’t want to over-mix it.

Add the vanilla essence, pinch of cinnamon, chocolate and macadamia nuts, and mix it all up, again, not too much.

Make a little dip or well in the middle of your pile of sifted flour, and add your big messy sugary banana mixture, and mix with a wooden spoon until there’s no visible flour. Make sure you really get down to the bottom for any flour that’s sitting underneath all of the liquid.

Once it’s all combined, carefully tip your mixture into the tin.

Whack it in the oven for at least an hour, checking it halfway through with a skewer/knife in the centre. You don’t want to overbake it, so if your knife is coming out chocolatey but without raw mixture on it you’re probably okay. This can take a while to cook depending on your oven; mine took an hour and forty minutes!

If the top starts to catch and turn black as mine did, a cunning foil hat is generally a good solution to enable it to keep cooking but prevent the top from burning.

Once it’s done, resist the urge to eat it right away as the banana mixture isn’t massively stable until it’s cooled and it will collapse pretty easily. Give it at least twenty minutes before turning it out of the tin!

And that’s it! I genuinely regret making this banana bread because I live alone and shouldn’t even really eat it. I think I’m going to take it into work and leave it in the kitchen with a sign on begging people to eat it for me.

Seriously, if you’re in Manchester and you want some just tell me where to send it.

This post is part of All-in August, where I attempt to post every single day in August, despite it being one my busiest months. Keep up with it here!